The Lightning Titan
by PokeSpeBanette
Summary: Hi there, my name's Tori. I'm currently about sixteen years old, but I'm also twelve as well. And I still don't know how it happened.
1. Chapter 1- A Cadet named Tori

Renny: Right so, basically this fic started off completely differently. But my laptop apparently decided to screw with me and basically just shut down on me after freezing while I was looking at a comic.

Marco: I do seem to remember being here before . . .

Renny: Yup. I'm changing the first chapter, mostly because I can't remember exactly what was in it, but everything else is gonna remain the same- you know, the other chapters?

Marco: You . . . haven't even written them yet.

Renny: Exactly! Disclaimer please!

Marco: Okay? Uh, Renny doesn't own _Attack on Titan_ , but she does own Tori.

Renny: On with the show!

 **OOOOOO**

Hi there, my name's Tori. I'm currently about sixteen years old, but I'm also twelve as well.

And I still don't know how it happened.

I'm mentally sixteen, but my body is twelve years old. I'm not saying that I'm just really mature for a twelve year old, I mean this literally. I used to be sixteen, but then something weird happened- and now I'm in my twelve year old body.

What was the weird thing that happened?

Well . . .

This is the sort of thing that normally happens in, I dunno, movies or TV shows or bad fanfiction.

I'm stuck in _Attack on Titan_. That one damn show where there's at least three deaths or maulings once a fucking episode.

I've been here for a couple of months already, and being the kind of obsessed fan that I am, I was able to tell instantly where I was.

Trost.

Of all.

The fucking.

Places.

To wake up in.

Mostly because of the famine thing that Armin was on about, but it's also kind of because of the Titan attack that'll happen in three or four years.

The good news is I've actually seen Eren, Mikasa and Armin. Like for real. That's basically every single fan's biggest dream, to meet the characters from their favourite anime or whatever in real life. Though I didn't meet them, I just more or less stood a few feet away and observed while pretending to not give a crap about them (that's one of my Stupid Skills).

I heard them talking about joining up with the Cadets a lot.

They're going to go and sign up for boot camp in the HQ- you know, the one that Titans swarm in the anime/manga (okay, for future reference, I'm just calling it the anime since that's the thing most people use for the designs of the characters and stuff)- in about a week.

And, for some damn reason, I've decided to go as well.

I'm actually not entirely sure why, but I'm sure I'll figure out some weird reason for doing it in a few days or something (hey lookie here, another Stupid Skill- I should probably make a list of these, actually . . .).

And so I'm basically signing up for the Cadets.

Even if it is a death sentence. I've never been known to care about my own life, anyway.

 **oooo**

"Name, age and district of birth." the bored Garrison soldier said.

Tori pursed her lips and tried to think- what the hell should she say? It wasn't like she'd considered what would happen when she signed up, and it's not like the anime ever showed what happened when anyone actually signed up for the Cadets.

It just showed them being drilled and terrified by Shadis, which, yeah sure, it was hilarious, but it didn't help much in this moment.

The man looked up and stared at her, well, more like glared.

"Look kid, you can make some crap up for all I care, just don't hold up the damn line." he snapped.

 _He probably shouldn't swear in front of twelve to fourteen year olds_ , Tori thought.

Wait, did he say she could make some crap up?

Well then.

"Tori Lithium, si- twelve, from Shiganshina." Tori said. Why not? She'd been with the refugees for a couple of months already.

The Garrison soldier blinked at her, surprised. "You're not the first recruit from Shiganshina, or Wall Maria for that matter . . . no clue why you'd want to train to become a soldier, after what happened a couple of years back . . . But whatever, you're in- go on to the medical examination rooms and then you can get into the carriages. They'll take you to the Southern Cadet boot camp. Understood?"

"Yep."

Oh great, a medical examination. Tori couldn't even remember the last one she'd had, but she could just somehow see that this was gonna suck ass like hell.

And it kinda did, though the doctor wasn't a total dick about her nervousness.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to take off your shirt." the doctor told her kindly. Technically it was a dark blue hoodie, but she didn't correct him- that word probably hadn't been invented yet. Or something. "Just pull up a sleeve and I'll do the usual tests. You don't even need to pay attention."

Tori got the feeling that not paying attention was something that everyone did during medical examinations.

So she took his advice- despite somewhat paying attention- and just drifted off into her own little world.

When the doctor called for her attention and said the medical examination was over, Tori was surprised- and slightly disappointed, because she'd been daydreaming about having a husky puppy called Paul. She loved huskies.

"Off you go, Tori." the doctor said, gesturing to the other door that probably led to outside where the horses and carriages were waiting for the recruits.

"Bye." Tori said as she went out. The doctor seemed surprised (what, did no one say 'bye' to him, like, ever?) but he returned the word nonetheless.

She was about to walk out of the door, but then a sudden and kind of worrying thought stopped her. Tori frowned and turned around, much to the confusion of the doctor, and picked up the paper that he was using to write down her medical examination stuff.

Tori looked at the paper blankly for a few seconds, scanning it- and then she put it down and gave the doctor a shaky smile.

" . . . What is it?" the doctor asked, almost warily.

"Nothing, I just wanted to check something, that's all." Tori reassured him.

"Right . . . You'd best get going." Poor man still looked confused as Tori actually did walk out of the room this time.

It was only when she was out of anyone's sight that she let herself sink to the floor in complete shock.

She could read perfectly fine, she knew this- Tori even took English Language at Sixth Form, it was basically required that she should know how to read incredibly well. It was also required that she should know how to write as well, which, admittedly, she couldn't do as well as reading. But here? In this world specifically?

She couldn't read the writing.

It was all just random symbols to her.

Well shit.

 **oooo**

Tori had never been in a horse carriage before. She'd ridden a horse, but that had been in some dumb fairground at her old primary school when she was like seven or something, and some guy had been holding the reins so it didn't try and kick her off or something.

Riding in a carriage was different.

She didn't particularly like cars, mostly because the doors were too fucking fiddly for her liking, but Tori could compare this to riding in a car- only a lot more bumpy and somehow more comfortable.

Probably because she'd been sleeping on a hard, cold floor for the past two or three months, but whatever.

There were several other people in the carriage with her, but Tori just basically ignored them all, even the boy that was sitting across from her. She ignored their conversations and just thought (worried) to herself about what she was gonna do about the reading thing.

She could still read and write in her own damn language, so it's not like she became illiterate when she woke up in this crapsack world. It's just that she never noticed that she couldn't read this world's writing, which would make the lessons in boot camp a hell of a lot more difficult.

"- okay?"

Tori blinked. Someone had just poked her in the shoulder.

She looked up from staring at the floor of the carriage (now that she noticed it, there were some pretty cool designs carved into it- sweet) and looked at the boy across from her.

"Are you okay?" Marco asked again.

 _Holy shit, Marco,_ was all Tori could think. Her voice decided to work on its own though.

"Uh, yeah, why?" she asked.

"It's just that you were staring . . . and you weren't really blinking." Marco said, smiling slightly. He looked a bit worried. "You looked really scared too- is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?" Tori raised an eyebrow.

Other than the fact that she couldn't read, Tori was basically fine. Well, now that she thought about it, she'd probably wash out the minute she got onto the aptitude tests- she did, after all, have absolutely shit balance.

And you needed good balance to even operate an ODM gear.

Fingers snapped in front of her face, and she jumped, slamming her back kind-of painfully into the carriage's side.

"Sorry, you were doing that staring thing again." Marco laughed a little bit. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Just like Marco. Wow, Tori had basically forgotten how nice the dude even was. He'd become a martyr or something for Jean when he'd been killed, and he was only in the first half of the season (technically). He never went halfway with the kindness thingy.

. . . Did she just unitentionally make a dead Marco joke? Dammit.

"My name's Marco Bott, what's your name?" Marco asked.

Of course, she already knew his name- besides Levi, Jean and Marco were her two favourite characters. And like the rest of the fandom, Tori shipped Jean and Marco- or she just did the whole 'we're like fucking brothers yay' thing with them. She wasn't fussed either way, because both sides of the coin were adorable and fluffy and-

She was getting off track. Stop fangirling.

"Tori Lithium." she answered, grinning at him. Hey maybe she could make friends with the dude. Tori'd have to be careful about what she said though.

"Strange name." Marco commented. "Then again, I've heard stranger- there was this one guy in Jinae who was called Twinge."

" . . . What." Tori said.

"I know!" Marco laughed. "Even he thought it was a weird name, so he told everyone to just call him Twin. Which was a huge improvement."

"Is twinge even a word?" Tori wondered.

"I think so."

God, this place was so fucking weird with the names. You had unusual and awesome-sounding ones like Eren or Eld or something, and then you got the normal ones like Sasha and Annie and Krista (who was actually called Historia, but she'd been Krista for, like, ever so Tori was calling her that until otherwise).

And then you had Marco, who was basically the butt off many, many Marco Polo and half jokes.

The entire fandom needed therapy, seriously.

They both seemed to hit it off almost instantly. Which was weird, because normally Tori became fast friends with people who were just as coarse and sarcastic as she was. And they happened to always be at least an inch taller than her too. She seemed to have a thing for taller friends.

At least Marco fit the tall thing, what with Tori being like five foot three or some shit, and him being . . . well, fucking tall.

But maybe he was secretly a sassy bastard, like basically everyone thought he was. He had to be, to put up with Jean all the time, right?

Oh wait, if Tori was friends with Marco now, did that mean she'd have to deal with Jean as well? Sure, he was one of her favourite characters, but even Tori couldn't handle dickheads like him twenty-four-seven. She'd had enough of them to last her an entire lifetime. Dickheads had pretty much fucked up her life and mental health status, basically.

Meh, maybe she could just be Marco's friend and ignore Jean while secretly fangirling from a distance.

Or something.

When the carriage eventually got to the boot camp, Tori wasn't really as surprised as everyone else when she saw the desert it was in. Or whatever the word for it was. But there was also a forest nearby too, so at least there was that.

"Oh man, I was hoping for something more . . ." Marco frowned as he tried to find the word for it. " . . . better." he finished lamely.

"Well it's not like we're gonna be coddled or anything." Tori shrugged. She already knew how this place worked, so it didn't matter much to her- hopefully Marco would just pin her lack-of-giving-a-shit down as her living as a refugee or something. "May as well get used to the bullshit early on, am I right?"

"I suppose so . . . Well, so long as they don't starve us or anything, I guess this is okay." Marco was grinning now.

Tori almost made a comment about Sasha, but then she stopped herself just in time- they hadn't met Sasha yet, dammit.

Be. Careful. Tori.

 **oooo**

As Tori guessed before when she'd been watching the anime, the way the Cadets were positioned in the induction was basically random. Or actually, it was more or less a case of 'stand wherever the fuck you want you little shitheads, you're still gonna go through hell anyway' according to Shadis.

Man, what a bald-headed dickface.

So, because she and Marco had somehow become friends on the way to the boot camp, they stood next to each other. Tori only had to lean forward a little bit to see Jean standing next to Marco, looking incredibly bored. Tori wasn't really ashamed to admit that she was looking forward to seeing him get head butted by Shadis.

Speaking of, the bald dude himself was currently on the row in front of them, and was drilling some poor kid who looked just about ready to piss and shit himself in a few seconds.

"You think he'll pass us over too?" Marco whispered. He was shaking slightly, watching Shadis with wide eyes.

"Nope." Tori told him honestly. "He'll scare the fuck out of you. Or us. Whichever."

"Why is it one or the other?" Marco asked her, tearing his eyes away from Shadis's latest victim.

Tori shrugged, but actually she did know. Those two instructors that were walking around the Cadets talked about Shadis passing over those who had been through the hell of a Titan attack two years ago- or in Mikasa's case, gone through the murder of her parents- as shown in the anime purely for the benefit of the audience. Probably.

Though Tori had no clue why Shadis hadn't passed over Armin. Maybe he didn't look as traumatised.

It was a damn good thing Tori could just basically switch off any outward emotions (Stupid Skill number three), you know, like keeping her face blank and her body posture pretty damn relaxed. Maybe she'd get lucky and Shadis would be fooled by her emotionless act.

"Row five, about face!" Shadis snapped.

The Cadets in front of them spun around, and most of them looked completely terrified- which only made the ones on Tori and Marco's row- row six- even more nervous about being drilled by Shadis.

"Oh man I'm gonna throw up . . ." Marco whimpered.

"Dude, just force a smile and pretend you're totally fine." Tori whispered back. That's what he'd done in the anime after all.

"Hey if you do throw up, can I draw it so I never forget the kid who vomited in the induction?" Jean whispered.

Tori gave him a flat glare, to which Jean just responded with a smirk.

And then Shadis was about four of five people away, and the three of them shut up and kept their backs straight (or as straight as Tori could get, she could never do the straight-back thing for that long) and eyes in front of themselves in case he heard or saw them.

 _If the dude doesn't pass me over, he's gonna shout at me,_ Tori thought. That wouldn't do much good.

You know. Considering that last time someone shouted at her, Tori basically tried to saw their limbs off with a tenon saw she just happened to have in her hands (it was at school and she was in Design Tech, okay) at the time. It didn't really help that the idiot girl had tried to wrap her arms around Tori and basically rape her in the middle of the fucking classroom.

In other words, Shadis shouting at her might not go down all too well- for either of them.

The dude might end up with a missing arm if he was lucky, and she might end up with no food for a few days (unless she begged Marco or something) and she'd have to do a few hundred laps like Sasha did when Shadis caught her eating a fucking potato of all things in the middle of the induction.

A glance to her right told Tori that, yeah, Sasha was still eating the damn thing.

Well, at least she'd get to witness it firsthand.

And then Shadis got to Jean.

"And who the hell do you think you are, you little runt?" Shadis snapped, looking down at Jean with a glare that would freeze even the most defiant person.

And of course Jean was probably just dense.

"Jean Kirstein, from the Trost district, sir!" Jean shouted, saluting.

The good thing about Shadis possibly shouting at Tori was that she'd get to do the salute for real instead of as a farewell to a fellow fan of _Attack on Titan_ at the end of secondary school.

"And what the hell do you think you're doing here, Kirstein?" Shadis snapped.

"I aim to join the Military Police, sir, the best of the best!" Jean answered.

Shadis narrowed his eyes and leaned down to stare Jean in the eyes. Tori secretly grinned when she saw Jean take a nervous step back.

"You wanna live in the interior, huh?" Shadis muttered.

"Uh- y-yes?"

Wait, this hadn't happened. Jean hadn't been this freaking nervous.

Shadis leaned in even further, and Jean took another step back. If anyone couldn't see that he was shaking, they were clearly blind. Or just stupid.

" . . . And what makes you think they'll even consider taking a scrawny runt like you, Kirstein?" Shadis asked, almost casually.

Wait, he never said that before either.

"If I . . . train-"

"I DIDN'T ASK FOR YOUR OPINION, RECRUIT!" Shadis suddenly bellowed.

Jean jerked back and stumbled, looking almost ill, and then-

He threw up.

Yeah, this definitely hadn't happened in the anime.

Shadis leaned back with a look of pure disgust on his face. Jean coughed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and Tori just about noticed that his shaking was even worse now. Well, that at least was normal- after someone vomited, you did normally shake a lot.

Tori sort of knew that from . . . way too much experience.

"The MPs won't take on someone who vomits all over his boots when he's scared, runt!" Shadis snapped.

Despite Jean being a complete dick, Tori felt kind of pissed on his behalf. Shadis could have at least given the dude some time before drilling him again, sheesh.

And she could see several of the other Cadets snickering at Jean, too. Assholes, they were just about ready to shit themselves a few minutes ago. And those who hadn't gone through Shadis's drill yet clearly had no idea how terrifying the dude could be.

Wait, was she actually defending Jean? Huh. And just a few minutes ago Jean had been the one taking the piss out of Marco for wanting to vomit.

Shadis moved onto Marco, who jumped and tore his worried eyes away from Jean (looked like Tori wasn't the only one who was kind of concerned) and quickly saluted.

"What the hell is wrong with your face, you smiling idiot!?" Shadis yelled.

Marco gave Tori a side-eyed glare, and she shrugged as subtly as she could with Shadis literally right next to her.

"Marco Bott, sir, from Jinae, near the South side of Wall Rose!" Marco cried. "I aim to join the Military Police and give life and limb in service of the king!"

That is, if he didn't die in three or four years.

"Well then, that makes you an idealistic fool." Shadis said softly. Yeah, this happened- but Tori couldn't understand why the hell Jean vomited. "And a rube."

Also Tori still wasn't sure what the fuck a rube was.

Shadis leaned in to whisper to Marco, but since she already knew what the bastard was gonna say, Tori leaned back to see (as best as she could) around Marco, checking on Jean in case he actually fell down or something.

Luckily it seemed that these instructors weren't _completely_ heartless, because a couple of people from what Tori assumed was the medical place for this shithole had come over and were gently leading the dude away from the snickering of the other Cadets- although, Tori could see a couple of them looking just as concerned as Marco and Tori probably were (Armin mostly, what a fucking saint, seriously).

Shadis had finished with Marco, and before he could even consider looking over at Tori, she quickly shut off any and all emotion filters for her face and stood with her back as straight as her fucked up balance and back muscles would allow her (at the moment).

Shadis just looked at her for a second, and then moved on to Connie- who, as usual, got the salute the wrong way around and promptly got held by his _fucking head what the hell Shadis seriously are you trying to kill him._

"You think that Jean kid's okay?" Marco whispered while Shadis was shouting at Connie with the usual bullshit about hearts being on the left side and not the right.

"You think it's a good idea to even consider opening your mouth with him like right there?" Tori fired back.

" . . . Good point, I'll talk later."

And then everything moved onto Sasha otherwise-known-as-Potato-Girl Braus. Which was funny to watch, and funny to see everyone's generally horrified reaction to her apparent stupidity, but for some reason Tori felt slightly detached from it all in terms of being bothered about it.

Probably because of Jean.

Dammit.

Why in the hell did he throw up? Did Tori being present change the whole thing, or something? Or, well, was this a kind-of different world she'd landed in?

If it was the last one, Tori might not be able to know everything about this place. Or at least not as much as she originally thought, that is. Thankfully it seemed that Titans were still the cannibalistic giants they always were, but she wasn't entirely sure that that was a good thing or not yet.

 **oooo**

Jean turned up in the- what did they call it here? Mess hall? Fuck it, yeah, mess hall. Let's call it that.

Anyway, Jean turned up a couple of hours later. Sasha was outside doing her rounds (yes, _those_ rounds) and Eren, Connie, Mina, Armin and Marco had stayed out to watch her in case she actually literally fell over (ohmygod no one can run for that long and not die, okay).

Though of course Tori knew exactly what they were talking about instead. And what Eren was blabbing about. Ish. Kind of. Okay not really, she didn't particularly give a crap about that damn scene- Tori was more interested in Jean picking a fight with Eren.

Jean came in quietly, which was unusual- but since he'd vomited in front of literally everyone, Tori supposed being quiet was something that anyone would do, even Eren.

And Tori only noticed because she'd been watching the door in complete boredom, having finished the weird-ass soup these idiots called food. It was better than bread and water though.

She raised an eyebrow and watched him sit down in the middle of the dinner hall. No food was put in front of him, so Tori assumed that whoever was making the food right now (because it wasn't any of the Cadets, she could assure anyone of that) were told that he probably shouldn't have anything to eat until his stomach decided to settle the fuck down.

Marco and the others came in, possibly reassured that Sasha wasn't gonna fall flat on her ass after two hours of running, and sat down- and then Connie shouted something about the Colossal Titan and how Eren had seen the fucking thing, which kind of made Tori confused because hadn't Armin and Mikasa seen the exact same thing?

So why was everyone always going after Eren like he'd been the only one there?

And again she was surprised, because instead of standing next to whoever the fuck that dude even was, Marco pretty much ignored the lot of them and wandered over to Tori's little corner of get-the-fuck-away-from-me-or-die-bitches.

"Hi, Tori." Marco said, as he slid into the seat. One of the people cooking (an instructor, judging by his beard or whatever it was he called that pathetic bit of hair on his face) set down some food for him, and left after Marco thanked him.

"Yo." Tori waved her spoon thing at him lazily. "Shouldn't you be listening to Eren speech-making Jeager over there?"

"I'm not like the others, I don't think- I didn't want to hear about the Colossal Titan." Marco shrugged. " . . . Or the Armoured, since Connie's moved on from the Colossal now."

"Far as I can tell, he's a complete moron." Tori told him.

Marco choked on his soup and quickly drank the water from the- cup? fuck it- from the cup next to his soup bowl thingy.

"Sorry." Tori said, not even bothering to sound sorry at all.

"You're awfully cynical for a twelve year old, you know that?" Marco smiled, shaking his head.

"I try."

"Are you trying to pick a fight!?"

They both glanced over at where Eren was now standing up, and Jean was just giving him a flat look.

" . . . Should he even be talking at all?" Marco murmured. "I mean . . . my grandma used to say that after throwing up you shouldn't open your mouth for a few hours until the sickness passed."

"That was nerve-sickness, not random oh-god-I'm-fucking-dying sickness." Tori shrugged. "S' probably different or something."

"Probably . . . I should go and break them up before it gets out of hand." Marco sighed. He stood up, just as Jean decided he was gonna be an idiot and stand to square up to Eren.

And then the bell rang.

Tori hadn't been that arsed about the fight's _end_ overall, but Marco not being there to 'soothe things over' was another inconsistency she didn't know how to deal with.

First it was Jean throwing up, and now it was Marco not being with the group hounding Eren for details about his mom's death. What next, Ymir admitting she had the hots for Krista?

Oh wait.

She'd basically already done that.

Haha nevermind then.

 **oooo**

That night, sleeping in the girls' barracks . . . was weird. Tori had gotten used to sleeping with a bunch of random people because of the refugee thing, but somehow this- it just felt different. She felt disconnected to these people.

But there was one thing she noticed- the girls' beds weren't doubled up like the boys were. So there were no girls sleeping next to each other in seperate bunks or some shit.

There were also shelves where they could put there stuff next to the beds, too.

Which kind of sucked, because Tori didn't actually have any possessions besides her clothes, really. She decided to go with what she'd always wanted to do and chose a top bunk, just because why the fuck not, but even that didn't do much to keep away whatever was wrong with her.

Somehow she managed to get to sleep, but Tori did wake up like way earlier than anyone else.

And then a couple of hours later, sometime after breakfast, it was the aptitude test.

"I just know I'm gonna fail this . . ." Marco sighed, burying his face in his hands.

 _If anyone'll fail, it's me,_ Tori thought.

Tori'd had a fucked-up balance since the day she'd been born, apparently. And there hadn't even been an explanation for it until her Art teacher in Sixth Form- who she'd known for literally two or three months- had noticed what was wrong and had helped get a diagnosis.

And somehow the fuckers in primary and secondary school hadn't noticed. Even though she'd known those bitches for years.

Wasn't that their fucking job? To notice who had mental disorders and health disorders and shit?

Clearly the places she'd been at for the past several years of her life were completely and utterly shit.

"Nah, dude, you'll do fine." she said instead. "I know you will."

Marco gave her a shaky smile, and said nothing back to her. Probably because he was too worried about his own failure to see through Tori's emotionless mask, to see how she was having a mild panic attack over falling flat on her face.

The good news was that she would never screw up as badly as Eren would, even if his belt was broken and no one knew but her.

This should be entertaining.

"Next six, up!" Shadis shouted. The six currently trying to keep themselves upright in the mocks of the ODMs (no other words to discribe the damn pole thingies) were let down, much to their relief.

Turned out she and Marco were in the next six.

Shiiiiit.

She wasn't gonna get out of this, was she?

"Hey."

Tori glanced up at Marco- who was actually taller than she'd thought, who the fuck did he think he was, Bertholdt?- and saw him smiling like a saint at her.

"Don't worry, you'll do fine as well." he told her gently.

. . . This was maybe the first time someone had seen through the emotionless mask.

Tori wasn't sure if she should be impressed, flattered, worried or just plain pissed off. Or all four. Which wasn't actually that hard, to be honest.

"GET UP HERE YOU WORTHLESS MAGGOTS." Shadis bellowed.

Tori only just managed to not launch herself at him.

"You already know the basics from watching the instructors," the dude tightening her straps said, as he did just what he was supposed to. "And you've seen some of the other Cadets do it, so you should be fine."

"If I don't fall on my ass." Tori deadpanned.

"If you don't fall on your ass, yeah."

Tori decided she liked this dude- he wasn't gonna give her shit for saying she was gonna fail, he just casually brushed it aside and carried on. That's the sort of attitude that Tori thought most teachers should have, really.

But what did she know, her experience with teachers who weren't Sixth Form tutors was basically unapproachable cunts who couldn't tell the difference between a normal kid and a kid who had several mental disabilities/health issues.

Once the straps were done (and weren't those a bitch to even get on in the morning, a couple of the girls had to help her out) and Tori was, for lack of better terms, loaded into the mock ODM thing, the instuctor (whose name Tori didn't know but she resolved to learn it _somehow_ ) stepped back and took a hold of the wheel.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Who the hell's ready for this?" Tori shot back.

"Fair point, kiddo."

Tori glanced to her right- she was on the last one of the line- and saw Marco already being gently lifted into the air.

The anime hadn't actually shown his test, but since he got seventh place in the Top Ten, Tori assumed he was pretty good at this. And he was, too.

Dude was a little bit short of Mikasa-level in terms of keeping steady in the mock ODM straps. Even Jean, who had apparently been the top of the class for ODMs, hadn't been as steady as Mikasa or, indeed, Marco.

Maybe the dude was just better at the theory of ODMs, or something.

Whatever.

The instructor started to turn the wheel with a slow-sounding _crank_ , and Tori saw and felt the wires on either side of her start to move upwards.

 _Okay, here we go . . ._ she thought.

Tori had an image of how this could go in her mind's very, very imaginative eye- she'd do well for three seconds or so, maybe less, and then she'd fall. Maybe not as bad as Eren did with his broken belt or clasp or whatever it was, but she'd still fall.

And Tori wouldn't have an excuse like he did.

Then she'd be shipped to the fields, and she'd be alone again. And possibly homeless, since most of the people in what she called the refugee camp of Trost were basically that anyway.

. . . You know what?

Fuck this, she was not gonna just give up because of her shitty balance. Marco said she could do it, so Tori was gonna damn well _do it._

And it was lucky that most of the time whatever imaginary scenarios her mind's eye decided to think up next were basically complete bullshit.

Because she did it.

Tori managed to stay upright.

Sure, maybe she was a little bit wobbly, but who the fuck wasn't wobbly on their first ODM test? Not counting Mikasa and apparently Marco, who were probably gods or something, and also Sasha who'd basically just swung there like she was saying 'look at how many fucks I give' or something.

Actually, now that Tori thought about it, her balance- shitty as it was- did have some upsides.

She'd first discovered these so-called upsides when she'd been on her way home on the bus, from Sixth Form. Normally when stopping and starting, the buses tended to sort of throw you forwards or backwards if you happened to be standing up (or sometimes even if you were sitting down, there were no fucking seatbelts despite the whole 'wear seatbelts in a moving vehicle' bullshit).

Tori, at first, had tried to stand like everyone else did when they were waiting to get off the bus.

She quickly found out, even before she knew why she had bad balance to begin with, that Tori was even worse than most people when trying to stay upright on the bus.

So, a month or two after being diagnosed, Tori had decided to try purposefully unbalancing herself while waiting to get off the bus- and guess what? It had worked. She still stumbled, but that was besides the point, and she didn't almost fall on her ass when the bus stopped.

Point was, Tori had found out that by forcefully unbalancing herself, she could actually sort of gain a balance that would be considered normal for most people.

Maybe this was the same thing.

If so, then she was fucking lucky.

Hell. Bloody. Yes.

After her turn was over, and Tori discovered that she was actually pretty good at it, she and Marco watched another set of six Cadets try and stay upright. Some fell on their asses, and without the excuse of having a broken belt like Eren, they were obviously not gonna make it through the testing stages.

Tori had to remind herself that she was the only one who knew about Eren's broken clasp thingy.

"How many people do you think Shadis is gonna cut?" Marco asked, after about three more sets of six Cadets.

"Uh, depending on how well they do tomorrow . . ." Tori pursed her lips and tried to think. " . . . 'bout a third of us."

"The good news is, it won't be either of us- will it?" Marco looked down at her and grinned. "I can't say as much for me, but you did pretty well."

"Dude. No. You don't get to say that, you were basically Mikasa-level." Tori told him shamelessly.

Marco's cheeks went red. Awww. He was so fucking adorable, seriously.

"I'm actually serious, Polo-boy." Tori went on.

Marco looked confused, but he was still embarrassed as he opened his mouth to speak. "Polo-boy?" he asked.

"You know." Tori shrugged. "Like Marco Polo."

"I . . . don't know who that is."

"You what." Tori looked at him. "How can you not know who fucking-"

Then she stopped.

Because, well, let's face it, in _Attack on Titan_ it wasn't like they had much oppertunity to even go anywhere but the places inside of the damn walls. And Tori wasn't really sure who the fuck Marco Polo was herself, but she knew the game pretty well.

Maybe she could explain the game and give Marco a chopped version of who she thought Marco Polo was without sounding like she was insane and possibly from god-knows how many years into the future.

Or from another reality.

Whatever.

Marco was watching her. Now he just looked concerned instead of confused or embarrassed.

"I'll explain later, dude." she said.

 **oooo**

"Oh, I guess that kinda makes sense." Marco said, after supper was over. "So, lemme see if I got this right . . ." Tori nodded for him to continue. "You're in a pool or something, and you play a game called Marco Polo- one swimmer shouts 'Marco' while their eyes are shut, and everyone else shouts back 'Polo' so that person can try and find them. It's like water tag! With the person being 'it' being pretty much blind, anyway."

"Yeah, we just need to find a pool so we can play it." Tori replied. "And more people. And someone who's willing to teach me how to swim."

Marco laughed.

They hadn't been the first out of the mess hall, more or less they were kind of some of the last to get out, but even so most people were still hanging around the barracks and the dinner hall until the bell went. Or until Shadis decided he'd had enough of the kids (though some of them were fourteen, so Tori wasn't sure if 'kids' was the right word when there were so many age variations) randomly hanging about in the middle of the camp.

She noticed Jean coming out of the boy's barracks, smirking to himself. Tori could probably guess, judging by his expression, that Eren had just tried to beg him and Connie for help in the aptitude tests- or, well, posture control . . . whichever.

"You know, you should cut your hair." Marco suddenly told her, while they were on their way over to the barracks.

"Huh?" Tori replied smartly.

What was this, some sort of expy of the conversation Mikasa and Eren had last night or some shit?

"It's really long, and you do have it tied up, but still." Marco went on. "You could cut it to-" He made a vague gesture towards her shoulders. "-about there, maybe?"

Tori grabbed a few of her dark red strands (yes, actual dark red, not ginger-red or whatever). True, her hair was fairly long, coming down just above her hips. But she'd assumed that it'd be fine in just being tied up, so Tori had left it.

Unfortunately, tying up her hair with two bands like she normally did (one to keep it in a ponytail and the other one further down said ponytail to stop it from getting literally everywhere) wasn't an option anymore since one of her bands had broken a couple of weeks ago.

"Yeah sure, sounds like a plan." she said, shrugging. "Does this dump have any scissors?"

"Most likely, but would you know what to do with them?" Marco asked her.

" . . . If I get lucky I might end up with some skin missing." Tori admitted.

Marco laughed. "Right, that settles it, I'll cut your hair for you. Don't gimme that look, my dad's a barber- he taught me some stuff."

Huh. That was unexpected. Oh well, good news for her, it meant that she didn't need to worry about Marco being a total amateur about cutting hair.

By the time they managed to find an instructor who actually knew where the fuck to find scissors in the damn boot camp, it was pretty much almost time to get back into the barracks. Which sucked, because it might have been a good idea to sort out her hair as soon as possible.

You know, since no one was actually sure when the hell they were starting on the real ODMs.

Despite what Eren had implied in the anime, the instructors didn't actually assign them ODM gear the second they got to the damn camp- which sucked, because Tori had been kind of looking forward to handling real ODM gear instead of the cosplay set she had.

But whatever, she'd get there at some point.

"Why are the instructors' offices so fucking far away from the barracks!" Tori exclaimed, several minutes of walking later.

"I dunno, maybe they didn't want to hear kids in the middle of the night." Marco shrugged.

"They need to get their fucking priorities straight."

Marco's only reply was a loud bark of laughter.

Yep, he was definitely a sassy bastard. Well, he had to be- if he wanted to keep up with her, that is. Tori was kinda looking forward to see how he handled her bantering/happily-arguing skills.

The conversation about cutting her hair started up as they finally rounded the corner of the dinner hall.

"So, you want it to your shoulders?" Marco was asking.

"Yup- maybe a little bit under, though, I still want it long enough to at least put tie up or something." Tori told him.

"Sure, I can do that. Straight cut, or . . .?"

"Who the fuck even wants straight, that's boring."

"Uneven it is." he grinned. "I'll just have to make sure I don't cut your neck open or something."

"You do know I'm not a Titan, yeah?"

"I dunno, you look like one." Marco retorted with a snigger.

"Oh it is fucking _on_ , Polo-boy!"

 **OOOOOO**

Renny: So yeah, original plan was to sort of get Jean into the trio in this chapter, but the whole thing seemed like way too forced- plus I wanna give the impression of actual time passing, not just like a single fucking day. Occasionally, due to the nature of the show (meaning the ton of shit that happens in like a single damn episode) some of the chapters might have way too much crap in them.

Marco: What she means to say is that if it feels like she's forcing stuff on you, let her know without being a flamer about it.

Renny: My version of you in this fic swears, why the hell don't you.

Marco: Because I'm polite. And I don't have to deal with Tori and Jean's . . . randomness.

Renny: Bullshit.

Marco: Randomness.

Renny: BULLSHIIIIIIT SAY IT.

Marco: Goodbye for now everyone!

Renny: Oh hell naw you don't get to pull that on me of all people!


	2. Chapter 2- Kick ass and make friends

Renny: Yoooo how's it going everyone?

Marco: I'm fairly certain they just want the story.

Renny: Good because I have no clue what to say here without giving away any spoilers.

Marco: Shall I do the disclaimer then? *Renny nods* Renny doesn't own _Attack on Titan_!

Renny: On with the show!

 **OOOOOO**

I actually used to wear bandanas.

You know, because I have- uh, had- such fucking long hair. Only reason I kept it long was because my parents wanted me to cut it, and I was obviously just like "haha lol no I'm not doing that" just so they'd be annoyed.

Anyway, I used to wear bandanas before I woke up in this crapsack of a world.

I had several- just the one to begin with, a blue one (blue's my favourite colour). Then I got a bright green one, which was a mistake because it looked stupid so I never wore it again, and then I had another blue one and a red one. Then I got a black one.

The red one broke like two weeks after I started wearing it, which sucked because I really liked that one. The blue one followed after, but I'd had it for a really long time, so it was fine- and besides, I did have a second blue one.

But my favourite so far would have to be the black one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those silly girls who worry about what to wear and all that sissy bullshit. But I like to think that the black bandana went pretty well with my hair.

Black and red goes together, as everyone would surely know.

If you didn't know this, you now know. Red and black go together perfectly.

But for some reason, I can't seem to remember what happened before I woke up here. It just seems like I blacked out and was just suddenly in this world- and I didn't have even one bandana on me.

Which sucked ass.

But still, at least my hair is now somewhat managable. Marco cut it a few days ago, which was fairly lucky since we started doing some serious ODM training after that second day (and after Eren's broken clasp thing was discovered).

Well, I say serious . . .

More like we're still on the post things where we did the aptitude tests, but we've moved on and are basically being drilled on basic movements.

Apparently, according to that cool instructor (whose name I still have yet to fucking learn, dammit) we're starting the theory lessons next week. So, in other words . . .

I am so fucked.

Because, as I found out like a week or so ago, I can't read this world's writing. I can read and write in my own writing, that is to say my own _world's_ writing, but to me this world's stuff is basically a bunch of complete gibberish.

But, on the other hand, I could try asking Marco to teach me how to read. Writing is another story entirely, but if I can at least recognise letters I could probably get the rest of this shit down.

. . . Which may take two or three years.

I'm not really sure if I can learn to read in this world's writing.

But at least I can say I tried, so that's something.

Wait, how the hell did this go from me moaning about not having bandanas to me being all rightous about learning how to fucking read.

 **oooo**

"Kill me now." Tori groaned.

Marco gave her a disinterested pat on the back.

Tori looked up from her soup/vomit and glared at him.

"You could be a little bit more sympathetic." she said flatly.

"You're moaning about the theory lessons." Marco shrugged. "They might not be as bad as you think."

"You wanna bet?"

Tori did know some stuff, but that was mostly from the anime. She had no idea what the lessons were actually about, since there had only been like a tiny section of a single lesson shown. Which sucked balls.

"C'mon Tori, it's not like you can't read or anything- you'll be fine." Marco gave her a reasurring laugh.

Yeah fucking right.

If only he knew, right?

Tori would have told him that she actually couldn't read, but- and this was a stupid fear- she was kind of worried that things would end up like they did with that Mira girl.

Mira had only been in the camp for about three days or so. Shadis had been drilling into her about why she couldn't try any fancy stuff just yet (apparently she was the only one who had the balls to ask), and then he'd shoved the instruction manual for the ODMs (and wasn't that a shock, ODMs had fucking manuals) into her hands and told her to read out one of the reasons why doing fancy things isn't a good idea for beginners.

She told him she couldn't read.

And things, for lack of better words, basically went to hell for the poor girl.

Less than three hours later, she'd been teased by almost literally everyone in the camp (Tori and Marco didn't- Tori because she'd be hypocritical and Marco because he was a good dude- and the Golden Trio didn't, and for some reason neither did Jean).

But Mira had, or seemed to have, nerves of fucking steel, and she just went about doing whatever she was meant to do and a little bit more.

But even the strongest break eventually.

Despite the fact that this world was pretty much primitive and really, really poor (although that was debatable for anyone in the interior) nearly everyone could read. Some fans had thought that Eren couldn't read, but that wouldn't make much sense since he'd been reading those books of the outside with Armin.

Mikasa was just too badass to not be able to read.

Turned out that not being able to read was actually a weird thing, and of course, weird things and weird people were generally turned into outcasts pretty fucking quickly.

A day or two later, Mira had had enough- she packed her bags and left in the night, and only the instructors were aware of this. The other Cadets found out later, during breakfast the next day.

And were promptly given a massive talking-to about why the fuck bullying wasn't allowed, especially in a place like this. Training was hard enough as it was, the instructor- a balding man who was way too badass for anyone to mention his lack of hair- had said, and bullying was just not okay to begin with.

 _Tell that to those bastards back home,_ Tori had thought, as everyone nodded like they hadn't been taking the piss out of Mira.

Hypocrites, the whole fucking lot of them.

"I mean, no offence to Mira, that is . . ." Marco was saying. "But it'd be strange if another Cadet turned out to not be able to read too."

"Keep digging, Polo." Tori muttered. She stabbed her spoon into the vomit/soup in front of her and ended up getting some of it over the table. Dammit.

"What was that?" Marco asked, looking down at her.

"Nothing." she said a bit too quickly.

"Um-"

"Noth. Ing."

" . . . Of course."

Breakfast went by silently after that- well, for them it did, since everyone else was loud as fuck- which sort of made Tori worry. Was her bitchy personality getting to Marco? Couldn't be, he had the patience of a fucking saint. Or something like that.

After the cooks had cleaned up (and another thing, in two weeks the Cadets were gonna be forced to fend for themselves when it came to food and drinks and cleaning, so there had recently been a scramble to figure out who was good at what so a rota could be established quickly) it seemed that Marco's silence was gonna continue.

Just as they were walking out to the field (or what passed for a field, there was no fucking grass on it) Marco suddenly broke away from Tori and ran off towards the boys' barracks.

"What's up with him?" someone asked.

Tori turned around slightly and saw Reiner and Bertholdt wandering over. Annie was nowhere to be seen, but she couldn't be too far away from them.

"No idea." Tori replied. "Maybe he's PMSing."

"Pee em . . . what?" Reiner blinked.

"Grumpy as fuck." Tori translated. These people do not know your words, fuckdammit.

"Whatever you mean, I'm sure it wasn't anything you did." Reiner told her. Tori must have looked surprised, because he smiled at her and carried on. "You just looked you thought it was your fault he ran off."

"I'm losing my filters." Tori deadpanned.

"Your what?" Bertholdt tilted his head, looking confused.

Okay, a guy as fucking big as him could not be _that_ adorable.

Seriously.

How.

"And now you look like you wanna piss." Reiner commented.

"Not my fault your boyfriend is adorable as fuck." Tori told him.

Bertholdt made some sort of weird squeak-wail noise and tried to hide behind Reiner, but he was so damn tall that it was more hilarious than anything.

"Huh. Didn't think anyone would notice that fast." was all Reiner said.

"Wait, you're actually going out?" Tori just barely managed to not shout in pure shock.

Did that mean.

Oh dear god.

Holy fucking shit.

Dear god.

Reiner/Bertholdt was _fucking canon._

 _Oh hell yessssssss._

"Yup." Reiner said.

" . . . You gave no idea how hard it is for me to not burst into a massive squee-fest at this very second, dude." Tori said blankly.

"A-a what?" Bertholdt asked.

"Squee-fest. Squealing over how fucking adorable this is." she explained.

"Are you two done yet." Annie said.

 _Jesus shit_ where did she come from.

"Aw Annie, let me have some more fun!" Reiner laughed.

Annie only rolled her eyes and turned to Tori with a flat expression that she was actually slightly jealous of.

"They're not going out," Annie said. She ignored Tori's choke. "Reiner's just messing with you. He's done this like six times already."

"C'mon, Annie, don't make it sound so bad . . . it's funny, right Bertl?" Reiner asked, turning to his still-hiding friend.

But he never even moved half a inch before Tori booted him in the balls.

Any other time Tori would have laughed at how someone as big and manly as Reiner let out a high-pitched wail and fell to the ground, clutching at his privates.

"CUNT!" she all but screeched instead. "I THOUGHT YOU AND BERT WERE A _THING_!"

She had no idea why no one was stopping her, but some rational part of her mind (which was tiny a balls) said that Annie and Bertholdt were too shocked to do anything. It also said she was overreacting, but Tori rarely ever listened to her rational mind anymore.

And most likely Annie and Bert hadn't expected someone who was just under a foot smaller than Reiner to actually floor him with one kick to the balls, but whatever.

Someone pulled her away, literally lifting her up, before Tori could assult Reiner anymore.

"What the hell Tori!?" Marco cried, setting her down when he turned around. "I leave you for a minute and you kick some guy's balls in?"

"I don't like people playing tricks on me!" Tori snapped.

"You overreacted!" Marco told her.

"The hell I did!"

"You kicked his bollocks in! That is a _massive_ overreaction!" Marco looked just about close enough to shaking Tori very warmly by the throat.

"Holy hell, did you see that?"

"That girl just floored _Reiner_!"

"Oh my god oh my god."

And then Tori finally noticed the whispers which were gradually getting louder once the other Cadets gained enough confidence to actually speak properly.

She and Marco glanced around and saw that everyone was more or less too shocked to actually have a proper opinion, but so far the general reaction seemed to be shock and awe. Thank god, most of these people were bigger than she was- if Tori wasn't pissed off, she might not have been able to fight them.

" . . . You're lucky most people are impressed and not angry or anything." Marco sighed, after a few seconds of listening to the other Cadets.

"I've done worse, trust me." Tori informed him. Marco looked like he wanted to ask what she'd done that was worse than this, but luckily he didn't- maybe he thought he wouldn't actually want to hear the answer.

If Tori actually gave it to him, that is.

 _"What the hell is going on here, maggots!?"_ Shadis yelled.

That got everyone lining up pretty fucking quickly.

Reiner looked like he wanted to collapse and cry for the next few decades, but Bertholdt and Annie kept him up somehow. Marco, acting as a barrier (which wasn't needed, as long as they didn't try anything like that damn trick) between them and Tori, was pretty much just about as concerned as he had been when Jean had threw up during the induction.

"Today's lessons will determine just how well you useless lumps of meat can actually perform." Shadis told them loudly. Did that guy not have any fucking volume control, seriously. "Don't look so terrified you bunch of shitheads, we're not cutting anyone this time."

Several Cadets, many of whom hadn't exactly been the best in the class as of yet, looked relieved.

"We're gonna do this old-school." Shadis gave them a grin that, on anyone else, would have been reasurring. But because it was Shadis, it was the opposite. "Instead of cutting you, we'll just humiliate you in front of everyone- it's called motivation, runts. So anyone who isn't able to at least stay steady for more then ten seconds will find out what exactly humiliation means in this boot camp!"

Oh goody.

Tori felt like throwing a fucking party already.

"Well, it looks like we're all suddenly going to get a lot better at ODM training." Marco commented. He looked slightly worried.

"The good news is we _will_ be better." Annie told him.

"Yup . . ." Reiner wheezed faintly. "We're- yeah."

" . . . Oi, Polo." Tori muttered.

Marco glanced down at her. "Yeah?" he asked.

"Why'd you run off like that, anyway? I never got the chance to ask."

"Yeah, you were too busy kicking Reiner's balls in." Annie deadpanned from Marco's other side.

Yeah, she couldn't really argue with that one. Still, now that Tori thought about it, she may have overreacted slightly- but the fact that she had actually floored Reiner of all people, in a single kick no less, was fucking impressive.

"Uh, well . . . I wanted to check something." Marco shrugged. "I brought some books with me from Jinae, and I just wanted to know if I remembered to bring a specific one . . ."

"And did you?" Tori tilted her head slightly. For some reason people found it harder to not give her an answer when she did that (Tori was only copying Cas from _Supernatural_ , so whatever).

"I did, yeah." Marco gave her an easy and kind smile.

Tori opened her mouth to ask what book it was, but then Shadis started shouting again and she had to actually pay attention otherwise she'd miss what was gonna happen.

"Like the last few times, you miserable runts'll be doing this on the mock ODM poles." the bald dude shouted. "So you should at least know how to stay somewhat steady for a few seconds!"

Oh, fucking yay.

It turned out that ten Cadets didn't manage to stay steady for ten seconds or more.

Tori wasn't sure what definition of 'humiliation' Shadis was using, but she was fairly certain being made to run around in small circles for two hours straight wasn't really that funny.

Well, to her anyway. Everyone else just laughed at the poor people who were running around like headless chickens.

"I think that dude's got a massive stitch." Tori commented, nodding to a silver-haired boy who looked just about as big as Reiner, but not as . . . uh . . . built? Was that the right word?

"I think his stitch might have a stitch, actually." Marco mused. " . . . Same for her, over there."

Poor girl was limping- wait, was that Mina? Well damn. Looked like not every single character (even if they only had like three episodes or something) had been amazingly talented from the very beginning.

As if Eren wasn't anything to go by. Kind of. Whatever.

Tori kind of missed having dinner at midday (because two meals a day was all they were getting) or something like that, but when midday _did_ actually roll around and Shadis just continued drilling them on the fundamentals of not ending up like Eren on the first day, Tori wasn't honestly surprised when she found that she wasn't hungry at all.

Compared to the amount of times she could actually eat a day back in Trost, which was once if she was lucky, actually having twice a day, regular hot meals was actually a fucking luxury.

Tori wasn't entirely certain whether or not any other fans remembered at all, but Armin had mentioned that Trost had already been in the middle of a famine before the refugees had already gotten there. So that meant that anyone in Trost was already starving.

And then they were forced to take on fuck-knows how many refugees who were in need of food as well, which would have just made the famine thing even worse. No wonder Jean was scrawny as fuck.

And yet somehow the president of the town's merchant guild was a fat motherfucker.

Ugh, rich people never gave a crap about the poorer people, did they? Just like back home, with the rich getting richer and the poor slowly dying out while trying to dig through food banks filled with fucking beans or some shit.

Yeah, uh, anyway.

Moving on.

After that, everyone pretty much improved drastically- as if Tori couldn't guess why- and the ten who had been 'humilated' were allowed to skip the rest of the classes (or well, what passed for classes so far). They weren't granted a free pass for tomorrow, though.

Sucked for them, but at least they knew what not to do.

Those ten seemed to be more or less geared exclusively towards trying to beg everyone else for tips on how to stay upright for more than a few seconds on the mock ODMs during supper, though. So at least Tori knew the 'humiliation' worked to some weird-ass extent.

Three of them- one of them the really tall silver-haired dude she had noticed before- had opted to go to Jean and were crowding around where he usually sat alone (Tori wondered if at this point in the anime, Marco had already become Jean's friend- but he didn't seem too concerned over Jean right now).

The other two weren't as tall as silver-hair, but they were still fairly big. The blonde haired guy seemed to be built like Reiner, but his hair was longer and he looked crueler than said fucking tank did. The last dude was dark haired and seemed to have a permenant sneer on his face, which kind of made him look ugly.

Silver-hair was leaning on the table, talking to Jean, and black-hair and blonde-hair were standing somewhere near the sidelines casually.

But for some reason, Tori saw something different.

Silver-hair was in Jean's personal space, and didn't seem to be begging the dude at all- in fact, the scowl on his face made it seem like he was threatening Jean or something. The other two standing to the sidelines would have looked casual had they not been side-eyeing Jean and silver-hair, like they were bouncers or something.

They didn't have particularly nice expressions either.

Tori watched silver-hair for a few seconds, suddenly forgetting entirely about her supper.

Silver-hair leaned forward a little bit, his face darkening, and Jean sort of shrank into himself. Tori couldn't see his expression since his back was to her, but even so she could tell he wasn't enjoying the 'conversation'.

"Huh?" Marco said, when Tori nudged him.

"Check that out." she said, nodding to where the three big dudes were.

" . . . They're having a conversation, what's the big deal?" Marco asked.

Tori rolled her eyes and gave him a flat look. "Jean's trying to make himself look smaller. Silver-hair's got that 'if looks could kill' shit going on. The other two are there to make sure Jean doesn't hightail it the fuck out of there. That's the big deal, Polo-boy."

"Bullying." Marco said quietly. His face had suddenly gone very blank.

Tori quickly nudged him again to stop him from rushing off in defence of their resident lone wolf, and she gave him a knife-like grin when he looked down at her.

"I have an idea, and it's gonna be way more fun than yours." she told him.

"I never said I had an idea." Marco informed her. "I was just gonna kick their asses."

"Yes well, this is more fun. Trust me."

She gestured for him to lean down, and whispered her plan into his ear. Marco smiled.

"Evil." he said. "I like it."

Over at the table Jean was sitting at, the three guys were just getting worse. By now silver-hair was right up in Jean's face, and the poor dude couldn't do much to get away from him. And silver-hair wasn't giving Jean a chance to counter anything he said, as far as Tori could tell.

Marco walked over and sort of leaned over Jean, planting a hand on either side of him like he was making a barrier. Silver-hair backed off almost instantly, but everyone knew how friendly Marco was, so he wasn't really that scared.

Haha big mistake bitch.

"Hey there, Marco." silver-hair greeted. His smile was so fake even Tori could see through it. "How's it going?"

Jean, half hiding his face in his arms, looked up at Marco, who crouched a bit lower and gave silver-hair such a cold look that even ice would have seemed like a warm fire in comparison.

"Jackson." Marco replied coldly. "What are you doing here."

"Nothin' man, we're just-"

"Doing some late-hour bullying?" Marco suggested. "Is that how you and your friends amuse yourselves? By picking on someone smaller than you?"

"It's not like that-" black-hair snapped.

"Sure looks like it to us." Marco said over him.

"The hell do you mean, 'us'?" blonde-hair demanded.

"Hey Marco, can I ask you something?" Tori called.

The three boys turned around and sort of froze when they saw Tori. They could have froze because of the grin on her face, which was probably borderline slasher-level insane, or maybe it was because of how she'd kicked Reiner's balls in earlier, and now she was gonna be feared and respected by fucking everyone.

Or maybe it was because of the blunt knife she was flipping in her hand.

"Yes, Tori?" Marco replied.

"What's the sentence for murder around here?" Tori asked.

"Hanging, I'd assume. Maybe being shot on sight." Marco told her.

Tori flipped the knife again and frowned at it. The three morons were shaking even worse than Jean had been during the induction.

"What if I said I'd done the world a favour by getting rid of three assholes?" she wondered.

"Hm . . . I guess you'd get put away for life, maybe." Marco shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason." Tori stopped flipping the knife and looked up at Jackson and his bouncers. "Another question. How long do you think it'd take for me to hack off someone's balls with this knife?"

"A very long time, since it's blunt." Marco said. "I'd imagine it would hurt like hell, too."

Tori grinned. "Good." she said.

Jackson and his bouncers stared at her in terror and then ran out of the mess hall like they were on fucking fire or something. Several of the other Cadets watched them run out in confusion, but they went back to their suppers a few seconds later, muttering amoung themselves and snickering.

Marco stood up properly and glanced down at Jean, who was gaping at Tori like she was insane.

Which was probably completely accurate, actually.

"You alright there?" Marco asked.

"Huh?" Jean blinked.

Marco sat down next to him, and Tori chucked the knife in some random direction (it didn't land on or in anyone, but judging by the plop-splash and high-pitched scream, it'd landed in someone's supper) and sat opposite the two of them.

"Are you alright?" Marco repeated.

" . . . Uh. Yes. I mean-" Jean shook his head slightly. "I could have handled it myself!"

"Bullshit." Tori promptly shot back.

"Oh shut up, I could have handled it _without_ you two doing that psychopath routine, thanks." Jean snapped.

Huh. Ungrateful little cunt. If that was all the thanks she and Marco were gonna get for saving his dumb ass, Tori was never gonna help him out again, even if he fucking begged for help. Marco was another story entirely.

"Tori, no." Marco said.

"I wasn't gonna say anything." Tori muttered, leaning back and holding her hands up.

"I'm more concerned over what you wanna do, nevermind what you wanna say."

"Seriously, I didn't need any help from you two." Jean broke in. "Why'd you even come over here? No one else gives a shit."

Tori obviously wasn't the only one who heard the small bitter undertone in that.

"I never did like seeing people being bullied." Marco sighed, running a hand through his short hair. "I always stood up for whoever was on the receiving end, no matter how big the other guys were."

"Where the fuck were you when I was in s- Shiganshina?" Tori demanded.

Jean gaped at her, and Marco just shrugged.

"In Jinae, learning how to cut people's hair." Marco told her. Fair enough.

"You're from Shiganshina?" Jean breathlessly asked.

"Don't." Tori told him. "If you even think about asking for stories about the Titans, go and fuck yourself, okay?"

Jean looked surprised.

Tori was pretty good at faking anger. The only problem was that if she did fake it, eventually it would become real anger. So most of the time, she went with the 'tranquil fury' thing, because it was easier to fake than the 'I'll-kill-you-and-your-pets fury'.

And she could also remember what she could and couldn't say when faking 'tranquil fury'.

So, for this she went with 'tranquil fury' anger. Or, well, what she called tranquil. To most people she wasn't tranquil. Whatever. Her definitions of everything were completely different to most people's.

"I wasn't even _going_ to ask, Jesus." Jean scoffed. "Just wanted to know if you knew those three." He gestured vaguely towards the Shiganshina trio near the door.

"Especially _Mi-ka-sa_ , am I right?" Tori sang.

Jean turned into a tomato and hid his face.

Why was everyone in this dump so fucking adorable, seriously? In the show they were too busy screaming in terror and crying and watching people die constantly for that to happen. Maybe it was because that shit hadn't happened yet.

Oh wait, if Tori managed to graduate, she'd have to go through seeing people break down.

Dear fucking god, she was no good at comforting people. Like at all.

"Tori, please, have some respect." Marco said. "If he has a crush on someone, we don't just bluntly call him out on it. We tease him at every oppertunity."

Marco was _so_ not a fucking saint.

"Oh my god get away from me!" Jean cried.

"Yeah lemme think about it- no." Tori told him. "We saved yo ass, so we have the right to take the piss out of you for liking Eren's sister."

"You don't have the right, we're not even friends!" the boy snapped.

"What if we were friends?" Marco grinned. "That mean we can make fun of you?"

"No! Go away! You're both insane!"

"We probably should, I think Sasha's hunting for extra shit." Tori suggested, nodding to where Sasha was actually literally sniffing out abandoned food.

"Aw crap, I've barely started on my food!" Marco yelped. He jumped up and rushed back over to their original seats.

Tori snickered, gave Jean a sarcastic wave, and wandered over to Marco. She stuck her tongue out at Sasha, who had already made it halfway to their table, and Potato Girl collapsed to the floor and silently wailed. No one took any notice.

They were all pretty used to it by now.

 **oooo**

"Hey. You."

The girls' dorms, as Tori had said before, were different to the boys'. Tori wasn't sharing her bunk with anyone, which was somewhat of a shame, because even if they weren't double ones like the boys' Tori might have liked to be able to lean down once in a while and chat with the chick on the bunk below.

She'd already gotten used to having a bunk alone, which basically meant that either there were too many bunks and not enough girls, or that no one else wanted to bunk with the weird red-haired girl who swore like no-man's business and gave off a general aura of GTFO-or-die.

So when Annie suddenly turned up at her bunk and dumped her crap on the bottom one, Tori was a bit more than surprised to say the least.

"Yeeesss?" Tori asked cautiously, leaning over the wooden rails to look at the slightly-smaller-but-still-older girl.

"I'm moving my crap here." Annie told her.

What, no please?

"Uh, okay." Tori shrugged. "Why?"

Annie raised an eyebrow.

"I don't give a fuck, you do what you want, dude. I just wanna know why I'm suddenly sharing." Tori explained.

"I figure anyone who can beat Reiner's ass is good enough for me." Annie answered, shrugging.

"And here I thought friendship was based on, well, friendship. Not how well someone kicks someone else'll ass." Tori deadpanned.

"My definition and your definition of 'friends' are obviously completely different. You're sharing with me now. Deal with it."

"I'm cool with that." Tori said.

She flopped back onto her bed and listened to the rustling of Annie setting up her crap on the shelf for the bottom bunk.

Well, at least she had someone to annoy now.

Tori was _so_ gonna milk this for all it's worth. If that was even how the phrase was said. So long as Annie didn't try and kill her for being annoying. God fucking knows what that girl was capable of, she was too badass for words.

"Hey. Annie. Hey, Annie."

"What."

"Is Reiner still feeling my kick or what?" Tori whispered.

Annie's head appeared from below, her flat expression only seen by the poor light because some of the lanterns were still on- that wouldn't be true for long though, because some of the girls were turning the rest off.

"I assume so." Annie whispered back. "Good kick, by the way. Powerful. But you put too much weight into it. You'll unbalance yourself if you keep doing that."

"I have shitty balance to begin with, what do you want me to do about it, Snowday?" Tori retorted.

"If you have shitty balance, how are you able to stay upright in the ODMs?" Annie shot back.

"I unbalance myself and I end up being balanced. Fuck if I know how it works, it just does." Tori shrugged. "Same applies for the ODMs, I guess."

"You're incredibly weird." Annie bluntly stated. Then she paused. " . . . Did you just call me 'Snowday'?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You slack off. Like, a lot. And somehow get away with it. Snowdays are basically an excuse to do fuck all." Tori explained. "So, y'know, Snowday."

She waited for a few seconds for Annie's answer. The lights were all out now, so Tori couldn't see the other girl's face, but she could tell that Annie was still looking at her from the bottom bunk.

"Well, as long as it makes sense." Annie eventually told her. "Just don't overdo it, kid."

"I'll try not to."

"Good enough for me. Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep."

"Sir, yes, sir."

"No."

"Okey-dokey then."

Tori didn't feel detached that night. She still didn't get why she'd been feeling like that these past few days, but now that Annie had randomly decided she was good enough to be friends with, the detached feeling had somehow fucked off.

Maybe it was because she'd basically had zero friends who were female.

Besides Marco, Tori had literally made absolutely no friends whatsoever. Which was weird considering how friendly Marco was, so you'd think that she would have made at least a couple of new friends by now. Obviously her general mood of 'get the fuck away from me' scared people off.

And then she kicks Reiner in the balls and suddenly Annie's her friend.

Well okay then.

She could live with that.

Hey if kicking someone in the balls was a way to make friends, did that mean she could just do that to anyone and get more friends? Haha better not test that out, Shadis might kick her out of the camp faster than she could grab a saw and hack his limbs off or something.

Whatever. Point was, Tori now had a new friend. And it was Annie of all people, one of the least sociable people in the entire camp. Fuck yes bitches, Tori is doing the impossible. Suck a dick losers.

The friend thing probably extended to Reiner and Bertholdt, since they hung around with Annie basically twenty-four-fucking-seven (not including sleeping hours, obviously). Reiner wouldn't hold a grudge over Tori.

Probably.

She wasn't too sure about Bertl, but he was adorable, so Tori could probably deal with getting the death glare from him if he continued being adorable.

And yet Tori still wasn't sure how a dude that fucking huge was so adorable. It should have been impossible, but there we go.

Morning came fairly quickly, mostly because Tori actually managed to get to sleep early this time, instead of staying up half the night wondering what the fuck she was gonna do about the damn theory classes.

At breakfast, Tori was slightly surprised when Annie suddenly dumped her food opposite her and Marco, and then sat down like she owned the fucking place.

"Um . . . hi?" Marco said. More like asked. Tori didn't blame him for being shocked.

"Hi." Annie replied shortly. She turned around and shouted to Reiner and Bertholdt. "Hey, you two, get your asses over here now!"

"No offense or anything, but ah . . . why are you . . ." Marco trailed off uncertainly, so Tori decided to step in and save him.

"He wants to know why you're gatecrashing our little corner of awesome." Tori said.

"I was under the impression that being friends meant hanging around with each other." Annie said flatly, as Reiner and Bertl came over and set their stuff down. "Was I wrong?"

"Depends on your definition of 'friends'." Tori smirked.

It wasn't much, but she could have sworn she saw Annie's lips twitch upwards a little bit. Score one for the crazy team.

"Good morning, then!" Reiner grinned, the second he was seated comfortably.

"Hey, man." Marco grinned back. Well at least Reiner's appearance didn't shock him entirely.

"Yo, Tank." Tori called, kicking Reiner under the table to get his attention. "No hard feelings for me owning your ass yesterday, right?"

"No hard feelings." Reiner laughed. "What's a tank?"

"You, basically." Tori shrugged. "'less you want me to call you Booty. Cus me thinks you got the booty."

"He has the booty." Annie said with a completely straight face.

Tori cackled.

Poor Bertl looked completely lost, as did Marco- Reiner just laughed with Tori.

"Roses are red, violets are blue," Tori began, still cackling slightly. "Does Reiner got the booty? Yes he do."

"Good rhyme." Reiner complimented her.

"Thanks, Booty."

"I think your friend may be a bad influence on my friends." Bertholdt told Marco.

"Either that or they were just insane to begin with." Marco agreed shamelessly.

"And _ooooh_ I can call Bertholdt Kitten!" Tori cried, throwing her hands up in the air.

"K-Kitten?" Bertl squeaked.

"I don't think I need to explain this one, do I." Tori said.

"No, not really." Marco chuckled.

"He _does_ act somewhat like a Kitten." Reiner grinned. Annie grunted her agreement.

"Hah four to one majority, suck it!" Tori hissed happily. "Your new nickname is Kitten! Deal with it, Tower. By the way that's your other nickname. Tower. Cus you're tall as fuck."

"Do you just give everyone you meet nicknames or something?" Annie asked.

"Yup!" Tori grinned.

And now she had an entire group. Fuck yes.

This was a hell of a lot better than her own world- normally she'd have a tiny-ass group of friends, like maybe two or three or something, and some other people who she considered _as_ friendly but not exactly full-on friendship-y. Here Tori had four friends.

Just so long as Reiner didn't try and pull of anymore pranks like that last one, that is (oh, she'd still hang around with him, but maybe for a couple of weeks she'd kick him every oppertunity she got just to drive home exactly _why_ you shouldn't pull a prank on Tori).

 **OOOOOO**

Renny: And Tori shows her true colours as a completely insane weirdo!

Marco: I can honestly say, her behaviour from last chapter completely contrasts with this one.

Renny: Yes well, that was like the first/second day or something. Now it's like . . . a week or so into it, and Tori's basically me anyway. It takes me like three days to start being an insane weirdo to whoever I've deemed as my friend(s), so that's what Tori's doing. On another note, I've finally gotten an Archive of Our Own account (though it would have been nice to know there was a waiting list) so this story is now gonna be published on there as well. Or, well, here since it's on AO3. If that makes sense.

Marco: It does, don't worry.

Renny: Oh thank god-

Marco: To you, that is. No one else understands it, I'm willing to bet.

Renny: Oh go fuck yourself with a stick or something. Yeah anyway, there are those note things on AO3, but since Fanfiction doesn't have them, I'm not really gonna just suddenly stop doing ANs (that is, Author Notes) just because I can now do that in some other section of a sort-of-not-really different website. I'll probably just put down some random shit for AO3 or whatever. Point is, I'm not stopping the ANs, so anyone who actually bothers with these can rest easy because the randomness that comes from these won't stop.

Marco: You do realise people probably don't take any notice of these anyway?

Renny: Yeah but it feels good to talk- or type, whatever- what I wanna say. So like, whatever. Also on yet another note, I did originally plan to have Jean join the trio (or is fivesome now) at some point during this chapter, but I didn't want to do a massive mood whiplash after that randomness of Tori and Annie becoming friends. And yes that was actually planned, but it snuck in there before I could do the Jean scene (well, the _other_ one anyway).

Marco: We should probably end this before it gets out of hand, Renny. Otherwise people're gonna complain about how long the ANs are.

Renny: Eeeh if this crapsack of a story ever gets a TV Tropes page, I wanna see what they make of my ANs, so stuff it. Read and review! And, I guess, comment for the AO3 users? Fuck it, I'm just gonna keep saying 'read and review', I'm not changing everything just cus I have a new account on some other site. Bye now!

 **oooo**

Renny: Actually forget what I said about that damn AO3 account. I have no idea how the fuck to work the story upload thing, like seriously, how do I make the lines between the paragraphs, and it's taken away all of my bold and italic stuff, so fuck it. I'm just gonna collect stories and advertise my Fanfiction account.

Marco: Isn't it a bit too soon to give up on the AO3 account?

Renny: Well no one fucking told me there was a waiting list, and they also never said anything about how hard it'd be to actually upload a fucking chapter.

Marco: Seriously, I think you're overreacting-

Renny: I AM NOT OVERREACTING, I WASN'T GIVEN ANY INFORMATION BEYOND 'get an account it'll be awesome' SO SCREW THAT. Okay I'm done now, this time I'm actually saying bye. Read and review, people!


	3. Chapter 3- Jean joins in

Renny: Haha who the fuck told you this fic would be serious. It's gonna be funny because Tori's insane and Jean's basically a six year old in the body of fifteen year old so the joke's on you lot.

Marco: I have a question- how come Tori and everyone else, despite being only twelve to fourteen, are all swearing? Strictly speaking, kids that age shouldn't even know what swear words are.

Renny: Clearly you know nothing. Also Eren killed two people and swore several times when he was _nine fucking years old_ , so I don't think a bunch of twelve to fourteen year olds swearing like sailors is gonna have much impact on the plot. Anything else, or can I get on with this?

Marco: Well I can't think of anything right this second-

Renny: Good now do the disclaimer!

Marco: *rolls eyes and sighs* Renny doesn't own _Attack on Titan_.

Renny: On with the show!

 **OOOOOO**

Okay . . . so basically I found out what Marco was on about a couple of days ago.

You know, when I kicked Reiner's balls in and suddenly gained like three new friends (who have basically taken up permanent residence on me and Marco's table)? And he was on about that book he went to go and check he had?

I found out what it was, like, last night.

I don't even know what to say about this, like, at all.

I just basically stood there like 'huh' for about three hours. Not literally because that'd be stupid, of course.

But seriously.

I guess the fandom gave Marco the nickname of Freckled Jesus for a fucking reason, 'cus I'm starting to see traits of the holy fake-dude himself, if I'm honest.

You know what? I'm gonna call Marco Freckled Jesus from now on. Along with Polo-boy. And maybe Chris Evans, because he's kind of like that dude as well. Well, a freckled version of Chris Evans . . .

Erwin still retains the title of Captain America.

For very obvious reasons.

Yeah anyway, Marco is a fucking saint and one of his new nicknames is now Freckled Jesus, because I can see why everyone calls him that.

 **oooo**

Tori stared.

And stared.

And stared some more.

" . . . Are you okay?" Marco asked, lowering the book he'd just held up to show Tori . . . whatever. It wasn't like she could read the title.

Tori just continued staring at him.

Eventually Marco seemed to realise that she sort of wasn't in any condition to do much else but stare, so he put the book on the table next to their food and turned properly to face her.

"I don't mean to offend you or anything . . ." Marco began. "But, well . . . I figured it out for myself- you can't read, can you?"

" . . . No." Tori said, once she'd finally found where her voice had fucked off to.

"And I'm sorry for blurting it out like this, but I thought maybe I could help you to learn how, you know?" Marco shrugged helplessly. "I just . . . sorry."

"No, it's cool, I was actually considering asking you to teach me anyway, so whatever." Tori said blankly.

Marco blinked.

Okay, so basically what had happened was this:

Tori had walked into the mess hall, looking for food (she was hungry as fuck and it was supper time so yeah). No one else in their weirdo group had shown up yet, so it had just been Tori at the table.

Marco had wandered in with a book, so naturally Tori had assumed he'd wanted her to read it or he was gonna read it himself or something. Turned out no.

Marco had pretty much sat down and explained that he didn't expect her to read it (since when was she that easy to read), and that it was more or less a book on teaching people how to read. Which was sort of a paradox because how could you learn how to read from a book you couldn't read to begin with?

It took a couple of seconds, but it suddenly clicked for Tori.

Marco then proceeded to tell her he was gonna teach her how to read.

Freckled. Fucking. _Jesus._

"So that's a yes?" Marco asked. "And you're not mad at me for-"

"Polo, shut up." Tori broke in. "So long as you don't give me shit or spread it about, I'm cool with you teaching me to read this weird-ass writing."

"Thank god." Marco laughed, relieved. "I'll take notes for you when we start the theory classes, that way we can go over the stuff after class so you don't forget, alright?"

"Sure, why not?"

Of course, it could have possibly been a better idea to teach Marco her own language/writing, so he could make notes in that and she could go over them whenever she needed to . . .

But then that'd just sort of screw up any sort of secrecy Tori had tried to build up, and if Marco found out about her being from another world, she might quickly find herself being called insane (well more than she already was) and alone.

Tori did not want that at all.

"Hey, what's up?" Reiner grinned, setting down his food. Bertholdt and Annie followed him, nodding a silent greeting. Pretty safe to say Reiner was the loudest out of those three.

Ugh. No sexual innuendos. Seriously. You're supposed to be fucking _twelve_ , not sixteen.

"Marco's newest nickname is Freckled Jesus." Tori informed her other three friends.

Bertholdt was the first to speak up, weirdly enough.

"Um . . . why?" the tall dude asked hesitantly. Oh please, it wasn't like she was gonna kill him for asking.

"Because he's fucking Jesus, that's why!" Tori cried.

"Why is Marco having sex with Jesus?" Annie asked.

" . . . You're kidding, right."

"Of course I am." Annie told her.

"Thank fuck for that, I was getting worried." Tori muttered. "He's like Jesus because he's a fucking saint, and he has freckles. Freckled Jesus."

"What the hell made you come to that conclusion?" Reiner asked her.

Marco's face had been gradually getting redder and redder, until finally he was actually resorting to hiding his face in his arms. Tori, as unsympathetic as usual, just patted him on the head and grinned.

"He's teaching me to read these weird-ass symbols you people call writing." Tori explained. "He's a saint. He's Freckled Jesus. Bow to the fucking lord, bitches."

"I would, but I'm hungry and I can't really bow on an empty stomach." Annie said. She started eating, ignoring everyone around her in favour of her food. Ugh who was she, Sasha?

"Well at least we now know why he ran off the other day." Reiner commented, nodding slowly. "You said something about checking you'd brought a certain book with you, right?"

"Uh- yeah." Marco coughed. "My Mom thought that- no, actually, she _knew_ that there'd be some people here who wouldn't be able to read. I was gonna try and offer this to Mira, but she left before I had a chance to ask her without everyone else gawking at her. It's a good thing I didn't send the book back."

" _Damn_ good thing." Tori agreed.

It was only a few minutes later, after everyone had finished supper and they were going back to the barracks, that Tori realised something.

Reiner, Bertholdt and Annie hadn't said a single word about Tori not being able to read.

Holy shit, did she have amazing friends.

She and Marco had agreed to start lessons on reading tomorrow, during the break the Cadets had from the ODM lessons. They'd probably have to change the schedule of the reading lessons once the theory stuff actually began, but that was fine with Tori- because either way, she was still gonna be learning this weird-ass writing.

Haha suck it, nature! If . . . that was even who was against her. Or whatever.

Oh, nevermind.

After supper (which Tori was very tempted to call it tea, but she knew it wasn't that, and it was far too late in the evening to even think of it as that), she and Marco walked back to the barracks together. Reiner, Bert and Annie were on dishes duty, along with a few other Cadets Tori didn't know the names of, so there wasn't really much point in waiting for them.

"Do you at least know the alphabet?" Marco asked, as they walked.

"Yeah, E-"

"Okay, okay, you know the alphabet. Just wanted to know, that way I can teach you what the written version of each letter is without starting from scratch."

Tori grinned at him. "Go ahead and _try_ telling me you're not Freckled Jesus, mate." she told him.

"You can keep on saying it, but I'm not . . . a freckled . . ."

Marco stopped.

Tori didn't notice until she was several steps ahead of him, but when she did she turned around and frowned at him.

"Dude, why'd you stop? The instructors won't let us stay out anym-"

"Don't you hear that?" Marco asked.

"Uh, no?" Tori shrugged. Marco made a shushing noise. Tori rolled her eyes, but kept quiet anyway.

Aside from the faint sounds of dishes clinking in the mess hall, the even fainter chatting from the barracks, and the voices she could hear coming from somewhere behind the mess hall, Tori couldn't hear anything weird.

Wait.

Voices coming from behind the mess hall?

Tori looked back at the mess hall, or more specifically, behind the back wall of the mess hall.

"That's not normal." she commented. "Unless it's some of the older lot going at it."

"I doubt it." Marco muttered. He frowned and started walking.

"Woah wait, where the fuck do you think you're going?" Tori snapped.

"Like you said, we're not allowed to hang around anymore. The instructors have only given us five minutes out here and most people spend that time getting to the barracks." Marco explained as he walked. Tori quickly followed because she was sort of getting curious about whatever was going on back there. "So why are some Cadets behind the mess hall when they should be getting to the barracks?"

"Sex?" Tori suggested again.

"Get your mind out of the damn gutter, please." Marco sighed.

"Haha no."

They turned the corner.

The moron from a few days ago- what was his name, Jackson?- was there, along with his two bouncers. And so was Jean.

Jackson said something to Jean that was too low for Tori to hear. Jean shook his head and sort of made a weird motion that looked like a panicked attempt at running away, and then suddenly Jackson grabbed Jean and shoved him against the wall with a loud _thud_. Jackson's two bouncers closed in on either side.

This scene was way too much like before.

"Not again." Marco nearly growled. "They've been creeping around him ever since a few days ago."

"Yeah well, Jean didn't really like us butting in last time, so let's just see what happens." Tori shrugged, crossing her arms.

Marco glared at her.

"What?" Tori asked.

"Yeah well, I have fucking talent, so it's not _my_ fault you _don't_!" Jean shouted loud enough for Tori to hear clearly.

"The _fuck_ did you say, runt?" Jackson snapped, slamming Jean against the wall again.

Jean yelped, flinching away from Jackson, who was now getting up into his face. Ugh, that moron needed to learn what personal space was, seriously.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Jackson smirked.

"Hey, let's see if the runt talks when I do this." blonde-hair spoke up.

He grabbed Jean and physically lifted him up.

"Nonono wait- wait!" Jean cried.

And then blonde-hair threw him onto the ground, earning himself a pained yelp and a low whimper from Jean.

Tori nearly forgot what she'd said about not helping, but then she noticed that Marco wasn't standing next to her anymore.

 _Where the hell did he- oh,_ she thought. Well, looked like she wasn't gonna need to do anything. Yet, anyway.

"You gonna help out now, runt? Or are we gonna need to pursuade you some more?" Jackson snapped.

"The second option's always more fun for us." black-hair grinned. "So why don't you-"

Marco punched him.

"Ouch." Tori muttered, as Marco turned on the other two.

"Now hold on a second-" Jackson.

"Shut the fuck up." Marco actually _did_ growl this time.

He kicked Jackson away and grabbed blonde-hair by the back of his shirt, and then hauled him off Jean and threw him away like rubbish.

Jackson got up, slightly wobbly, and tried to rush Marco. It failed mostly because Marco just sidestepped him and tripped the cunt over with laughable ease, and then spun around to land another hit on black-hair, who had been trying to sneak up on him while he'd been distracted.

Obviously not distracted enough, though.

Tori edged her way to Jean, keeping an eye on the fight just in case one of the idiots Marco was beating up tried to go for her or Jean. If that happened, they'd quickly find themselves missing an arm or something.

"You alright?" she asked, crouching down beside him.

By this point, Jean had curled up in a defensive ball and was watching the fight with wide eyes, as if he couldn't believe what was going on- then again, Tori was having a hard time believing it as well. She knew Marco wasn't really a saint (she was still calling him Freckled Jesus) but for some reason, he just hadn't seemed like a violent person.

And yet this was sort of contradicting that.

"I-I could have handled-"

"Don't even try it." Tori cut over him.

" . . . It." Jean finished weakly. He coughed slightly and looked at the still on-going fight, which Marco was winning spectacularly. "Remind me not to piss him off."

"Duly noted."

"Thank you."

Marco threw blonde-hair into Jackson and sent both of the morons flying, and black-hair tried to rush Marco. Seriously, how many more times were they gonna try that? It hadn't worked the first time and it certainly wasn't gonna work this time.

What was the saying? Doing something over and over again and expecting different results . . .

No, wait, doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results was insanity. That was it. Haha morons.

 **oooo**

"Ow."

Marco's hand jerked away from Jean's face, and he almost dropped the cotton thing in his hands that he'd been using to dab at the scratches and bruises that had become more apparent after Marco had kicked ass.

"Sorry!" Marco winced.

"It probably didn't hurt him _that_ much." Tori spoke up from where she was sitting on a large pile of towels.

What? It was a nest. A nest of surprisingly soft, fluffy-ish towels. It was nice. And somehow better than her own damn bed.

"How do you know?" Jean retorted.

"Because you didn't cry like a-"

" _Tori_." Marco snapped.

She held her hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, _fine_ , whatever." Tori sighed dramatically.

Not her fault she had just about as much tact as a newborn baby.

Okay, so Tori didn't exactly believe in sugercoating stuff. No one had bothered for her, so why should she bother for anyone else?

Unless, you know, she was close to them and didn't want to hurt them (beyond her normal bullshit that is).

"Oh my god, how hard did those bastards even _hit_ you?" Marco asked, a few minutes later.

"It's- fine, really." Jean told him.

"You're not that good at lying, are you?" Tori observed. Jean went slightly red.

"Have they done this before?" Marco ignored Tori and spoke to Jean. "I saw them creeping around you these last few days, but . . .?"

Jean glanced at Tori. He looked like he wanted to try having another go at lying, but Tori was right- he was absolutely shit at it. Except for when he actually believed that lie. Like when he said he could handle Jackson and his bouncers. That was clearly bullshit.

"They keep trying to get me to help them cheat on the ODM training." he muttered.

"How the hell do you cheat on ODMs?" Tori wondered.

"That's what I wanna know!" Jean exclaimed. "They seem to think _I'm_ cheating, and they want me to tell them the damn 'secret', so they can get better at it- or at least pretend to, I guess."

"Have they ever considered that maybe they just suck at it?" Marco frowned.

"I told them that." Jean nodded. "But Jackson doesn't listen and if I try and fight back, he just gets Haine and Damien to beat me up more than he already does."

Oh, so those were their names. Which one was which, though? Mind you this probably wasn't the best time to ask.

"And you just let them?" Tori scoffed. It was the best time for skepticism though. "You don't strike me as the type to just let others walk over you, mate."

"I'm _this_ close to getting the bucket." Marco snapped, putting his finger and thumb close together in the universal sign of 'close' or whatever it was.

"Oh hell no, you don't!" Tori cried.

She grabbed one of the towels and dragged it over her head, effectively multi-tasking by using the towel to hide her sulking and also using it as a slightly-shitty barrier between her and her so-called _friend_.

" . . . The bucket?" she heard Jean ask.

"Annie stole one of the buckets from when she was washing the girls' clothes. Basically, I fill it with freezing cold water and dump it on Tori." Marco explained.

"It's fuckin child abuse, I'm telling you!" Tori yelled. "Child! Abuse!"

"I'm only a year older than you, it's technically _not_ child abuse." Marco told her.

Tori pulled the towel off her head and chucked it at Marco, who just ducked and stuck out his tongue.

"Real mature, Freckled Jesus." Tori told him flatly.

"Why do you dump cold water on her?" Jean asked. Apparently their usual weirdness wasn't gonna distract him.

"It's like using a water bottle on a cat." Tori rolled her eyes. "One way of saying 'bad kitty'."

"Or in this case, 'bad Tori'. Not that it fucking works, anyway." Marco muttered.

"Yeah cus unlike the rest of you I ain't no sissy when it comes to the cold."

"Yet you don't want me to dump freezing water all over you."

Tori hissed at him and chucked another towel. This time he didn't manage to duck in time and it ended up on his head.

She could handle the cold- way better than most people, actually. Hell, Tori was actually able to wander around in a t-shirt in the middle of winter if she wanted to.

Not on purpose, though. She had hated the school blazer and refused to wear it, even in winter, so Tori had been walking around school with just a t-shirt when she'd still been at the dump. Some of her old schoolmates whispered that she was cold-blooded (and cold-hearted) and that the freezing temperatures didn't affect her at all.

She _wished_ she was cold-blooded. Tori could feel the cold just as much as anyone else, it was just that she was more or less used to being cold all the time. And she also wasn't a fucking sissy.

Most of the time.

Though that was up for debate right now; she was getting used to being nice and warm half the time (the other half she was trying to stay upright in the ODM poles, so sue her).

Marco was wrapping a bandage around Jean's head (god, those cunts had hit him harder than they'd thought) when the bathroom door opened. Annie, to her credit, didn't even blink at Tori's nest of towels.

"Lights out in three minutes, you'd better get moving." the small blonde told them.

"Thanks, Annie." Marco said. He stood up and held out a hand to Jean, who stared at it like it was some sort of cruel joke being played on him. "C'mon, we're going to the same place anyway. May as well go back together."

"Hey, what about me?" Tori demanded, standing up. "Am I fucking chopped liver over here?"

"No, you're just annoying." Annie informed her.

"Well, fuck you very much, Lionheart."

Annie's eye twitched ever-so-slightly. "It's _Leonhart_."

"Lionheart."

"Leonhart."

"Lionheart- would you rather I call you Mouseheart, because I can." Tori suggested.

" . . . Fine." Annie said.

"Why do you have such weird friends?" Jean asked.

"I don't know." Marco replied.

"Come on, let's get moving- Shadis'll kill us we stick around this dump." Tori jumped up and stretched, kicking a few of the towels off her legs as she did so.

Annie rolled her eyes and went out of the room, and Tori followed her.

Even so, she didn't miss Jean eventually taking Marco's hand and standing up with some assistance.

"What are you grinning about?" Annie asked suspiciously.

"I'm plotting your demise." Tori said.

"Charming."

By some weird silent agreement, the next morning saw a little bit of change to the normal seats in the mess hall.

If anyone was shocked (and a lot of people were, judging by the looks they were getting) they didn't say anything, even as Tori's little group made room on their usual table for Jean. His normal one was basically empty, since apparently no one was friends with him.

"So, the plan's basically to hang around Jean until those twats leave him alone." Tori concluded.

"Like that'll happen." Jean muttered.

Tori narrowed her eyes, but it was only the fact that he was already hurt that stopped her from actually trying to hit him. Instead, she was gonna wait for a few days and _then_ hit him.

"I'm still caught up on why they want to cheat on the ODMs." Bertholdt frowned, casting a nervous-ish glance at Jackson and his two bouncers (who were looked frustrated that they couldn't get to Jean). "I wasn't aware it was possible."

"It isn't." Marco told him. "You're either good at it or you're not- those assholes just happen to not be."

"Well, there's five of us and three of them." Reiner spoke up. He grinned at Jean. "There'll be at least one of us with you at all times, so you'll be safe."

" . . . Thanks." Jean said quietly.

Well, at least he didn't try and say he could handle them. It was clearly bullshit and even Reiner, Bert and Annie would have been able to see that right away. In fact they probably already did.

A lot of the other Cadets continued to give them weird looks during breakfast. Tori had honestly thought that they'd get over it at some point, but eventually the looks got a little bit too much.

Evidently, she wasn't the only one in their weirdo group who thought that, if the exasperated and annoyed expressions of her friends (and Jean's slightly worried one) were anything to go by.

But Tori was still pretty fucking shocked when Bertholdt was the one who stood up and faced the entire damn room.

"There's this new and exciting thing you should all try- it's called _'stop fucking staring at us'_." he snapped loudly.

No one knew what to say to that.

"Why don't you draw a picture, it'll last longer!" Bert went on. Any noise had basically ceased to exist the second he'd snapped. "So Jean's sitting with us. I didn't realise that was a crime! Or is there some sort of law saying that he can't have any friends?"

He sat back down and crossed his arms, glaring at the wall and pointedly ignoring everyone who wasn't on the table. Even Annie was shocked.

Tori was the first one to recover, even if it wasn't by much.

"Dude, what the fuck was that?" she demanded.

"Uh . . ." And suddenly he was back to nervous Bert. "I get freaked out when lots of people stare at me for too long. Um."

"I was under the impression that getting freaked out meant hiding under a table and screaming like a banshee, but yeah, let's go with that." Jean said, nodding slowly.

"That was _awesome_!" Reiner grinned. He clapped Bert on the back. "We should freak you out more often."

"Please don't." Bertl begged.

"Please." Marco added. "We've already got one crazy person in this group, we don't need two."

"Who's crazy?" Tori grinned. "Oh, you mean me? I'm sorry, you mispronounced 'badass'."

"Try insane." Annie told her.

"What's the difference?"

Annie opened her mouth, and then paused.

"Case in point." Tori stuck her fist in the air.

It was totally true as well, so no one could tell her otherwise. Without being kicked where it hurt, anyway.

"So, first off- there are a few things you'll need to know if you're gonna stick with us." Reiner said a few minutes.

"You're not _actually_ psychopaths, right?" Jean promptly asked.

"I hope not." Marco shrugged.

That didn't exactly reassure Jean.

"I think what he means is that there is basically no shame or dignity here." Annie explained. "Tori made sure of that."

"Fuck yeah I did, shame and dignity have no place near me." Tori grinned and leaned back. She nearly fell off the bench, but caught herself just in time.

"Don't piss of Marco- although I think you had a demonstration of that already- and don't piss off Annie. They'll both beat you to a pulp." Reiner said, ticking things off his fingers. "Normally I'd say not to piss off any of us, but Bert's less likely to kill you right off the bat, I know how to forgive people-"

"I am guilty of experiencing that first-hand." Tori broke in.

"-and Tori's sort of half and half." Reiner finished.

"How is someone half and half in terms of not being pissed off?" Jean frowned. "That makes literally no sense at all."

"In other words, sometimes I'll see the funny side and laugh with you." Tori told him. "Other times, I'll peel your skin off with a spoon."

If Jean had been uneasy around them before, he was even worse now.

"Also another thing, Tori can't read." Bertholdt said. "And Marco's teaching her how. The first lesson is, uh, today, right?"

"Yyyyep." Tori nodded. She looked at Jean. "And if you even think of saying anything-"

"I didn't say anything with Mira and I'm not saying anything now. That'd be hypocritical of me." Jean told her.

Huh.

Okay?

"Hypocritical how?" Marco asked him. "Can someone in your family not read?"

" . . . Something like that."

Well, that was fucking cryptic.

But still, at least he wasn't gonna say anything- and then Tori remembered that, yeah, Jean hadn't actually said a word against Mira when that shitstorm had happened. It did sort of make sense, because if someone in his own family (more likely to be his mother or something, since the anime hadn't really shown much in the way of families) couldn't read, he couldn't say anything anyway.

Even so, that wasn't an excuse to sit in on Tori's first 'learn how to read' lesson from Marco.

"How many letters do you think you can memorise at a time?" Marco asked.

The three of them were sitting in a small clearing in the forest nearby the camp grounds, which was far enough away that prying eyes wouldn't bother, and close enough so that they could still hear the bell that told them to 'get the fuck back to camp grounds or else'.

Shadis had a strange way with words, Tori could give him that at least.

He was still a bald-headed dickface though. And not even Marco could tell her to say otherwise before the ass himself found out and kicked her out of the Cadets.

"Four, five at best." Tori answered. She glanced at Jean, who was watching quietly. "Why is he here and why is he being silent? I feel like he's planning my death or some shit."

"I'm curious, fuck off." Jean snapped at her.

"Oh look, it can speak."

"Trade one form of bullying for another, fuck it all . . ." Jean muttered.

"This ain't bullying, you shit!" Tori shouted, half-standing and practically snarling at him like a wolf. "You want that, go back to Jackson and his bouncers! But don't _fucking lump me with them_!"

"T-Tori, please, calm the hell down before someone hears us." Marco hissed nervously. "Jean, say sorry!"

Jean looked like he wanted to say anything but sorry, but obviously what she'd told him about peeling his skin off with a spoon seemed to have some effect on him. " . . . Sorry." he said eventually.

"You better fucking be."

Jean nearly said something else, but Marco held out a hand and stopped him just in time. They continued on with the lesson.

"Okay, so four or five letters at best." Marco hummed. "Shall we start with the easier ones or just at the beginning?"

"Beginning, it's easier." Tori said. "Otherwise I'll get confused halfway in. How many letters are there again?"

Marco stared at her.

" . . . I'm fucking with you, I know there's twenty-six." Tori told him.

"Thank god."

"Oh, I always wondered how many letters there were . . ." Jean mused.

And then it was his turn to be stared at.

"Well it's not like I keep track, starvation has a way of doing that to a person!" he snapped defensively.

Oh yeah. The famine. For some reason, she'd forgotten all about that- maybe it was because she was focused more on the lessons and shit.

"Ouch." Marco winced sympathetically. Looked like he'd forgotten too. "I kept forgetting . . . No wonder you and Thomas eat like you'll never see food again."

"And me. I do that too." Tori pointed out.

"You said you'd do it anyway."

He did have a point.

"Oh yeah, let's not forget the Golden Trio." Tori went on. She got two blank looks. "Eren, Mikasa, Armin? You know, the two dark not-siblings and their blonde genius of a friend? Any of this shit ringing a bell?"

"Yeaaaahh . . ." Jean rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "I never noticed really."

"You don't notice much, do you."

"Hey fuck you, at least I don't have a damn psychopath routine."

"Can we move on, please?" Marco broke in loudly. "You know, before the bell goes?"

"Okay yeah, I'm cool with that."

 **oooo**

The theory lessons were actually pretty interesting.

Tori, for some reason, had been under the impression that they'd just sort of give them a shit-ton of info about the Titans and the ODMs all in one or two lessons. Turned out that wasn't actually the case.

There was a lot more to be learnt than just random shit- the lesson the anime had shown was just a tiny bit of it, and everything else was a lot more.

They were doing the geography of the Walls right now. The towns and cities and villages and stuff- where they were, basically. It would be useful for when they finally chose their military branches.

Assuming they lived through training, that is.

Tori knew that she'd be able to remember it all, or at least as much as anyone else that is, but Marco wrote down everything anyway. He wasn't the only one who wrote notes, so he didn't look weird or anything. The good news was that Tori wouldn't need to worry if she accidently forgot something- which was very, very likely.

It had been almost two months since she'd first joined up- that meant it had now been five or six months since she'd appeared in this world. Tori wasn't exactly sure what to make of it, but for some reason it seemed like she was getting used to this one.

In that time, she and Marco had perfected their so-called Psychopath Routine (as Jean kept referring to it as, and the name had been picked by everyone else, so it stuck) and the assholes known as Jackson, Haine (blonde-hair) and Damien (black-hair) were bothering Jean less and less.

It also helped that one of the five- now six, since Jean was basically a permanent structure in thier weird group now- was always with him.

They'd also finally gotten their ODM gear, and Tori, being the paranoid little shit that she was, had stolen a knife, sharpened it, and then had written her name on her gear in her own writing. She would probably never be good enough to write down her name in this world's writing, but the good news was that Tori could now recognise the symbols that made up her and her friends' names.

So that was a start, at least. She could now read six words in that weird-ass writing. Yay.

" . . . I thought you said you couldn't read."

"MOTHERFUCKER don't do that!" Tori shrieked.

She jumped off the branch she was sitting on, and used her ODM gear (and that was fucking amazing to do, even after a month and a half of being able to use it) to throw herself to the ground semi-safely, coming to a stop next to Marco.

He didn't look particularly happy.

"You said you couldn't read or write." Marco accused her. "So what in the hell is _that_?"

He gestured to the book in Tori's hands, and the pencil-thing that was resting in between the pages. Which were filled with her own writing.

Fuck.

Well, it wasn't like it was gonna last that long anyway- the good news was that Tori could try out the lie she'd been thinking up in case this actually did happen.

She looked away from Marco and glared at some of the trees nearby.

"It's nothing." she snapped. May as well play it out, right? Pretend to be embarrassed and shit?

"Clearly it's not." Marco frowned. He snatched the book and the pencil clattered to the floor, but Tori wasn't arsed about that.

"Oi, that's my fucking dia- notebook!" Tori yelled.

"What the fuck?" Marco squinted at the writing.

Fucking hell, yeah, her writing was shit but it wasn't that hard to make out, was it?

"What's this language?" Marco demanded, waving the book in her face. Tori snatched it back and glanced at it.

Oh, wait. He wouldn't be able to read it even if he could read her writing.

" . . . Um."

"What is it?" Marco asked again.

"Okay, fine, fine!" Tori cried, waving her arms around frantically. "I made up my own language, okay? You happy now, Polo-boy?"

"Why would you make up your own language?" Marco didn't look any less confused or stern.

Time to see if this worked.

"Other people could read." Tori shrugged. "And I couldn't. I got bored of having to pretend that I was reading shit, so I made up my own writing language."

" . . . You ever considered that maybe that's the reason you're not learning how to read our 'weird-ass' writing properly?" Marco suggested gently.

"Meh. If you suggest that I give it up Imma fucking kill you." Tori told him.

"Wasn't gonna. I just had an idea- what if you taught me how to read and write this?" Marco smiled.

. . . What.

The expression on her face must have said the same thing, because her weirdo of a friend laughed.

"If I could read and write in this, I could take notes for you and you'd be able to read them whenever you wanted or needed to instead of having to ask me to go over the ones I already take." Marco explained. "And if you've been paying attention to my lessons, you should have some vague idea of how to teach me your own fake-writing, right?"

Well damn, that shit actually worked.

Mind you, if Tori did somehow manage to teach Marco how to read her writing, she might be in constant danger of him accidently reading her notebook and, well, descovering her biggest secrets.

Namely the whole 'I ain't from this world' and 'I'm the only one who fucking knows what happens in the future' thing.

"Sure, whatever." she said.

Dammit, Tori.

 _Two months and you couldn't even keep_ this _a secret, how long will it be until someone (probably Marco) found out about you?_ she scolded herself.

 **OOOOOO**

Renny: Me thinks this one might be slightly shorter than the other two, but given that it took a while to come out (compared to the first two since I uploaded them at the same time) I think I have an excuse.

Jean: . . . How?

Renny: Well, there wasn't much that could happen here, and I sort of couldn't get half the words out because I wanted to do next chapter so badly- and next chapter skips all the way to the end of the first year, which I'm sure that all devoted fans know as the episode titled _Distress_. To answer your questions, yes Tori will be aware of this- however, the second Cadet episode (that is, the OVA one) that's set in the second year, well she isn't gonna be aware of that one. Tori can't be fully genre savvy, y'know!

Marco: So why did I descover Tori writing in the- uh- notebook at the end of this?

Renny: It sets up the plot for a scene that I'm currently debating with myself over. Probably sometime during the second year, or maybe at the begining of the third year, and it may or may not (depending on how long the remake of _Distress_ turns out) happen next chapter.

Jean: Are you basically trying to blast through the Cadet years?

Renny: Yes. Otherwise this'll end up being either way too long or I'll get bored of it, and end it like I did with _Redemption_.

Jean: Yeah but you're remaking that one.

Renny: Because it was shit and I've grown past having a totally-serious fic with almost no funny bits in it. I think Marvel movies have influenced me too much. Anyway, I wanna see if anyone can finally guess what those bits at the start are- it's been implied and almost outright said by Tori at the end of this chapter, so it should be fairly obvious. Read and review!


	4. NEW ACCOUNT

Hey guys. I know this seems kinda sudden, but I'm moving accounts.

The new one is called RennyBanette, and since FF is a bitch for links, you'll either have to type in the name in the search thing or, alternatively, go to this profile page and follow the link there.

This fic will not be posted on my new account. In case you were going to ask.

Anyway, see you guys on my new account!


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